Blogging and all that Malarkey

It's lovely to come home and find something nice waiting for you, isn't it? A nice cup of freshly brewed tea is lovely (nicer with biscuits, but not so common). So is a nice piece of ginger cake with lemon icing. A smiley lady is nice too. I got all three today (which was lovely), but what made it lovelier was a copy of Jon Burgerman's retrospective book of his illustrations, Pens Are My Friends.

I am really, really pleased that places on our Visual Web Design Master Class are selling fast. Book your place before 10th October 2008 and you could win a copy of Inspired Design (DVD) and Transcending CSS (book), together worth £68.00*.

Web designs need not look exactly the same in all browsers. I know that’s a topic I have written about and spoken on a fair amount before, but somehow I’m always amazed by the reactions that I get when the subject comes up.

Demonstrating our designs to clients as XHTML/CSS pages rather than as static Photoshop or Fireworks has streamlined our workflow and helped us to set and manage a client’s expectations better than ever before.

Having spoken at almost twenty major conferences in the last few years, I've picked up a fair selection of schwag items and giveaways. Now that we are busy organizing our first For A Beautiful Web events, I'd love to know what the best shwag items you've received are.

Back in April, I was booked by Carsonified to present a half-day workshop on Microformats as part of their Future Of Web Design London spectacular. So what have Microformats got to do with death rays?

Want an easier way to re-style and optimize your pages to work better in Safari Touch (or Mobile Safari if you prefer) on the iPhone or iPod Touch? I did and now with a custom version of Allan Jardine ‘s Conditional-CSS I have it. And you do too.

When I set out to design the site to launch For A Beautiful Web I knew that I wanted to set a new tone and arrive at something a little unexpected. One of the ways that (I hope) I have achieved that level of unexpectedness was to turn to a classically trained artist, rather than a web designer for creative direction.

Having been booked by Carsonified to host a full-day workshop on advanced CSS back in May, in the weeks leading up to the show I had a flash of inspiration. Why not combine one of my favourite topics with one of my favourite musicians?

It's been on my mind for a while. In the last few years I've been one of the luckiest web designers on this planet (and probably others) because I've been asked to travel all over the world to talk about web design, CSS and even comic books. I love every minute of it.